Darling is a terrifying, story driven adventure game set in the fictional northern Montana town of Darling. The main focus is an attempt at recreating and expanding upon the kind of atmosphere and ambiance of our most beloved horror games, while driving a plot with a very dedicated story that will leave players crushed and shaking.
The world will seem to come alive around you as relics from a not long forgotten past tell a story overlooked by the outside world. An expansive game world will draw you in with plenty of discover-able locations.
Node based gameplay will allow you to explore your world before being shut inside of one of Darlings many now-decrepit buildings which groan self-pityingly at their forgotten past while you discover what secrets lie within.
The story of Josh and the town around him have been, and are continually being, rewritten to be as influential as possible and to stand out to players as having true depth and complexity, a feat which will create immersion.

ReportRSSDarling is ALIVE, switching engines, oh god how did this get here am not good wi

LET ME START OFF BY SAYING

I'm sorry for the let down, folks. I know a *very* few of you pm'd me stating that you were excited to see a horror game actively being developed for the CryEngine3, and I must beg for your forgiveness, as it will no longer be.
Cryengine3 is good, it's bright and beautiful, it's got lots of neat effects and is easy to use and easy to create assets for etc etc and I have nothing but good things to say about it..... but herein lies the problem. It's too beautiful and too concise. Taking something normal and making it look all bloomy with some nice anisotropic filtering and lense effects, maybe some ambient occlusion and etc, etc. It's the antithesis of what I want my game to feel like.

I have learned a LOT since having started this project. I knew it was going to be years before I even had an alpha level pack ready to be trodden through. I knew it was going to years before I had envisioned all of the gritty, horrible, execrable and even torrid aspects of the story, the characters and gameplay. I knew that it would take forever to learn the languages needed to pursue this endeavor, but no matter how much I tried to tell myself that it would get easier as I went along, I found myself sweating at the truth, for THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS 'EASY' IN GAME DEVELOPMENT.

See, When I first decided to do this, I attacked it pretty childishly. I tried setting goals and writing down daily notes and things but my problem wasn't really my method (though that has improved). I wanted pieces of every fun aspect of every game ever thrown into mine. Story telling, fun gameplay, open ended environments, cars, aliens, Schwarzenegger, etc. less I forget what the great Yhatzee has taught us:

"If you put too much of everything into your game than everything comes out a little bit bland and not very good." - Yhatzee, or something along those lines.

Some people will say that I'm cutting corners at expense of gameplay when reading this article and giving my game a "C-" 8 years from now or something, but I disagree. My primary concern is, and always will be, to tell an incredibly detailed horror story with as much depth and as much immersion as the human mind can take in. And while a team of 75 people could do that while implementing all the bells and whistles I recently mentioned, all in less than two years all the while using nothing but shake-weights glued to their foreheads as input on their hilariously oversized keyboards, I will be doing all of the work myself. So from here on out, Darling will be housed on the Source engine.

Well put.
Although i would love to have a horror game on cryengine 3, you are correct, you could whack a new skin on it and call it slender HD but gameplay and immersion is the main focus, and i am glad you see that, as some game developers don't realize this.
Splendid job so far, hope some more screens come out :)

Hahaha, your 'slender hd' comment made me chuckle. Thanks for the words, man. While 'pretty-to-look-at' can make fun games incredible, 'pretty-to-look-at but as-fun-to-play-as-contracting-syphilis' is what makes some gorgeous games flunk.

I'll be trying to work on the vanilla lighting system to make it a little more attractive and when that happens I'll post some teaser bull, but until that point I'll be showing off my (in)ability to put custom textures on blocks inside of game engines.